US President Donald Trump "fully supports" Israel's deadly resumption of air and ground invasion in Gaza, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said, blaming Hamas resistance group for the mass killings of Palestinians by Israel since Tuesday.
"He fully supports Israel and the IDF [Israeli military] and the actions that they've taken in recent days," Leavitt told reporters when asked if Trump was trying to get a Gaza ceasefire back on track.
Israel has unilaterally shattered the Gaza truce in effect since January 19 while killing some 700 Palestinians, including 200 children, and wounding 1,042 in the besieged enclave since Tuesday. On Thursday, Israeli bombardment killed at least 110 Palestinians, many of them women and minors.
But Leavitt blamed Hamas for the bloodbath.
"The president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages there would be all hell to pay, and unfortunately, Hamas chose to play games in the media with lives," Leavitt said.
Leavitt added the situation was "completely the fault of Hamas", adding that Trump wants "all of those hostages" captured by the Palestinian fighters to be released.
"It was a bloody night for the people of Beit Lahiya," said Fares Awad, head of the Health Ministry’s emergency service in northern Gaza of the Thursday bloodbath, adding that rescuers were still searching the rubble from homes that were hit.
"The situation is catastrophic."
One of the Israeli strikes on Gaza early on Thursday hit the Abu Daqa family's home in Abasan al-Kabira, a village just outside of Khan Younis near the fence with Israel.
The Israeli strike killed at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead. Those killed included a father and his seven children, as well as the parents and brother of a month-old baby who survived along with her grandparents.
"Another tough night," said Hani Awad, who was helping rescuers search for more survivors in the rubble. "The house collapsed over the people's heads."
TRT Global - Israeli army says early Tuesday that it has conducted air strikes in Gaza, the largest since a ceasefire with Palestinian group Hamas took effect on January 19.
Israel unilaterally kills truce deal
Israel resumed its genocidal war on Gaza early on Tuesday with a wave of deadly strikes, shattering a relative calm that had pervaded the Israel-ravaged Palestinian territory since a US-backed ceasefire took hold.
Hamas said it fired rockets at Israeli commercial hub Tel Aviv on Thursday in its first military response to the growing civilian death toll. Israel said it had closed off the territory's main north-south route as troops expanded the ground invasion they resumed on Wednesday.
A three-phase ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement had been in place since January, pausing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza during which Tel Aviv killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and left the entire enclave in ruins.
Israel reneged on the truce by only adhering to the first phase of the deal, neglecting the subsequent stages that would have ended the war, despite months of negotiations by Qatar, Egypt, and the US.
Instead, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's government seeks to extend the first phase of the deal with Hamas for a few more weeks to secure the release of all captives from Gaza and then continue the war and possibly occupy the Palestinian enclave, where Israeli ally US has vowed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians with no right to return.
Hamas has called on mediators to pressure Israel to rejoin the agreement it has violated for months and is now unilaterally shattered by resuming the genocidal war.
Hamas says it is willing to hand over power to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority or a committee of political independents but will not lay down its arms until Israel ends its decades-long occupation of Palestinian lands.
TRT Global - Mohamed Hadid, Palestinian American real estate developer and father of models Gigi and Bella Hadid, asks in a video why powerful Arab and Muslim countries are not using their influence in Europe and US to stop Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
